Fairgrounds and Nubbin Mischief
by epichlexi
Summary: Nikola and Helen take their daughter to the fair. Then Nikola gets into some trouble trying to distract Katie from begging for a puppy. A lockdown ensues, and it is NEVER a good idea to give nubbins sugar. A non-smutty nubbin fic? Yes it's possible! Please R&R


Here's another fic for my AU series. I probably won't be writing these strictly in chronological order. In this story, Katie is about two years old or so.

xxxxx

The local fair had not been something Helen had attended in many years. When Ashley and Henry were young she had taken them, though, and they had enjoyed it immensely. So, it seemed reasonable that when Katie was two years old it was time to introduce her to the tradition.

Nikola was excited as well though he hadn't said anything, Helen could tell he was looking forward to taking their daughter to the event. When they day finally came, they had gotten her ready and started out to drive to the fairgrounds in New City.

Arriving, Nikola had paid their entrance fee and they started inside with Katie, who was staring wide-eyed at everything. There were all sorts of displays, games, food, animals, and activities to explore and simply the massive throng of people had to be something intriguing, if not a little intimidating, to the young child.

"Mummy!" Katie pointed to a stall at the far end to the right of where they had come in. Helen walked over and saw it was a game of some sort which frankly Katharine was too young for. "Darling this is for older children. Oh look, look at the puppies." Helen decided to distract the child when she saw someone with some sort of purebred pups at the next spot. She was no fan of animals being bred for profit but it was a distraction to keep the toddler from bursting into tears for not being able to play the game that had drawn her attention.

Walking over to the next space, Helen set Katie down and took her hand. She and Nikola walked with their daughter over to the place where a handful of fuzzy golden doodle pups clamoring around their mother. Katharine immediately forgot her disappointment over not being able to play the game 15 feet behind them and went up to the side of the pen. "Mummy, look- puppies!" She beamed down at the creatures and Helen smiled. "Yes darling, oh look at them."

Nikola smiled watching Helen and Katie take in the sight of the puppies. It was nice to see his daughter enjoying a normal moment when their world was so… well, abnormal! Surrounded by abnormal creatures the rest of the world regarded as "monsters" had Katie used to them from the day she was born, but to Nikola it was nice to see her enjoying a moment that any other child would around a normal, relatively harmless creature such as a dog.

"Helen…" He started, but she shook his head. "Ah. I know what you're thinking and the answer is no. We've enough creatures to keep track of and care for that require much more complicated care than a puppy and I won't be taking responsibility for cleaning up after it nor do I care to purchase an animal bred as a cash crop."

"You wouldn't have to train it, the Carpet could handle that."

"Nikola, my answer is no, and I would never ask him to take on something like that because of something we might decide to do for our daughter."

Nikola sighed and shrugged. Helen's decision was firm and he just nodded. "Okay."

Katharine was now wandering off in another direction and Nikola went over to scoop her up into his arms. "Let's let mommy stay here and get attached to those puppies over there. I'll get you some cotton candy." He smiled and sent a wink to Helen before walking away with the toddler held close. Helen smiled warmly at the sight of them. Nikola had stepped into the role of father quite readily when Katie was born, she had been surprised. For someone who had lived 158 years without a family or children of his own, mostly in isolation and even obscurity, he had certainly warmed up to their baby girl the very first time he had laid eyes on her. Helen knew the truth, despite Nikola's attempts around the others to pretend otherwise: Katharine had him wrapped around her little finger and always would.

She let them this moment together, though she had no intention of standing around watching a bunch of puppies. So, she continued on down the path to see what else there was to do.

Nikola brought Katie to the food stands, looking around even as he tried to filter past the barrage of scents and smells from the stalls. Most of these items were utterly unappealing to him, owing a combination of his natural preferences for avoiding the artificial or inferior and also his vampire side kept him from much interest in things as well. He did eat, he was still part human after all, but he was picky to say the least. Though he knew children adored these things and he wanted his daughter to have whatever normal experiences she could living the life she had been born into.

"Okay, cotton candy." He walked over to one of the food stands and ordered a cone of the stuff, which he carried over with Katie to a bench that wasn't too surrounded by hyper people and chaos of every type. Breaking off a piece of the pink and blue fluff, he offered it to Katharine who accepted it eagerly and beamed. She had inherited her father's bright, contagious grin and mischievous flicker in her eyes. But the eyes themselves were Helen's dark blue and her hair was a very light brown that seemed more reminiscent of Helen's natural deep blonde than his own coloring. He was happy every time he caught a definite resemblance to Helen in his daughter's features. Helen was beautiful, after all, and he loved these two more than anyone else in the world.

"Mmmmm" Katie beamed, approving of the sweet fuzzy stuff her father had bought at the food stand. "You like that? Well, let me tell you something about cotton candy Katie. It was invented in 1893 and served at the Chicago World's Fair, that was the same year I lit the whole fair with electricity, for the very first time in history." Katie just reached for more cotton candy; she didn't much care about the other stuff. Nikola knew that, she was only two years old and children born in this century took electricity for granted, as well as its delivery methods via alternating current, but his daughter was still going to know the history of it. Nothing wrong with teaching children the truth about where things came from. Oh, and of course, he would make sure she knew the real truth about Thomas Edison.

"Doggy," Katie said as she finished the piece of cotton candy Nikola had given her. Apparently the matter of whether or not to get a puppy had crossed the child's mind too, and despite being only a little past two years old, once she had an idea in her head she didn't let it go. Definitely like Nikola in that sense. "Mama said no, Katharine…" Nikola sighed and broke off another piece of pink sugar fluff to offer his daughter, who took it eagerly. "But when we get home you can play with something there."

Katharine took the piece of cotton candy and was quiet as if thinking about that promise. She wanted to see the puppies again! "Uh, nubby." Katie nodded. Nikola smirked. Ever since the first time Katie had seen the nubbins in their enclosure, she had been as taken with them as Helen said Ashley had been.

"Maybe. We'll see what mama thinks of that."

"Nikola, really…" Came a familiar voice from behind them and Katharine beamed, "Mummy! Is good, good!" Katie held up the cotton candy proudly. "I'm sure it is darling," Helen nodded as she walked over and leaned to kiss Katie's head then looked to Nikola again. "Giving her something made of pure sugar? Honestly, Nikola. She'll never go to sleep tonight."

"Oh it's fine I only gave her three pieces. Here, you can finish it." He held up the paper cone shaped holder that the cotton candy was in. Helen shook her head. "Ah, you bought it you eat it." Nikola pulled a face at that. "I'm more of a gummy bears person, sorry. Didn't think you'd approve of those for her."

"Most certainly not." Helen picked up her now sticky-handed toddler and went in her purse to find some wipes to get the sugar off her hands and face.

"Mummy, candy…" Katharine started to whine when she realized that Helen wasn't going to let her have any more of the cotton candy. "That is quite enough for now darling." Helen shifted her weight a bit in her arms so the toddler was resting against her hip, and turned to Nikola. "I think I'll take her sightseeing for a bit and hope she runs off the sugar high before we go home."

Nikola grinned and leaned back a bit on the bench with a shrug. "Suit yourself. If she doesn't go to bed I'll stay up and watch her."

"You say that now…" Helen started, but Nikola's smirk only grew into a wide grin. "Ah come on, I don't need much sleep. Vampire, remember?" "Hmmm.." Helen nodded, humoring him and took Katie to go find something for the child to do for a bit.

Nikola sighed and looked around, then looked at the cotton candy in the paper cone which most of it was still left. He shook his head, and then smirked as he got an idea.

Helen took Katharine and went exploring around some of the other attractions at the fair. She bought some turns at a ball throwing game and "helped" Katie win a little stuffed penguin. With Katie holding her penguin in one hand and holding Helen's with the other, they started to make their way around the fair looking for Nikola.

"Daddy!" Katharine spotted him before Helen and tried to make a break for it to run to him. "No, no darling you can't just run away here." Helen held her hand more tightly but quickened their pace toward Nikola, who was several stands down the aisle watching some people play a laser shooting game at one of the stands. He looked amused in a way Helen recognized as the fact that he thought these teens were idiots somehow for how they were executing the task. "Daddy!" Katie called again when they were closer, and Nikola turned to see Helen and their daughter making their way over. "Katie!" He replied, earning a beaming smile from his daughter before he scooped her up into his arms.

The three of them passed a little more time together at the fair before it had started to get dark and Helen suggested they head back home. Besides, she wanted Katie to have real food for dinner and not just more junk Nikola purchased from a vendor stand. So they had left the fair and returned to the Sanctuary. By the time they arrived home, it was about dinner time and the Big Guy invited the three of them to come join everyone for some homemade lasagna.

Toward the end of dinner, Katie brought up the puppies again and Helen sighed, shaking her head as she looked to Nikola for a response. She was tired of being the bad guy and saying no. "Katie," Nikola looked to his daughter. "Let's go down to see the nubbins."

"The nubbins?" Helen looked across the table at Nikola now with a questioning expression. "Yeah, she asked at the fair if she could see the nubbins when I told her no on a puppy." Nikola shrugged. Helen thought about this a moment and nodded. "Well I suppose as long as they're properly supervised they are relatively harmless."

"Great. I'll take her down, I'm sure you have a lot to get caught up on. At dinner I saw Huggybear practically chomping at the bit to tell you about whatever catastrophe he managed to divert today in your absence." Nikola smirked, walking over he leaned in to place a quick kiss to Helen's lips before picking up Katie to head downstairs with her to the area where the nubbins' enclosure was located.

"Daddy, look... Nubbies..." Katie pointed as they reached the area where the nubbins were housed behind a plexiglass wall. "Mhm," Nikola had never really been all that impressed with the living furbies, but he knew they were irresistable to Katharine, who apparently took after her unknown older sister in that regard from what Helen had told him about Ashley's love of the creatures. "Okay... Katie, let's not tell mama about this but I'll get one out for you." He opened the lock on the nubbins' enclosure and fished out one of the nubbins, a young docile one the "children" called Max. He turned to face Katie and sat down, offering the creature toward her. "Nubby!" Katie beamed and reached over to pet the creature's fuzzy head. The nubbin purred and chirped, and even Nikola had to admit to himself that the little furball was kind of cute.

The nubbin then clicked its teeth a little, looking around and sniffed at them both. It was looking for a treat. Nikola smirked, an idea occured to him and he got out the folded up paper packet of cotton candy from his jacket pocket.

"Candee for nubby." Katie giggled. "Yeah. Should we?" Nikola questioned the toddler who nodded vigorously. "Nubby like!" "Hmm, all right."

Nikola broke off a piece of the cotton candy and offered it to Max. The nubbin chomped it right out of his hand and swallowed it in almost an inhale of the fluffy pink sugar. It purred, a different sort of purr. Its eyes widened and it started to hop, ears waving.

"More candee nubby?" Katie smiled, glad her friend liked the offering. Nikola blinked and shook his head. "Uhh, no I don't think that's a great idea Katie. It seems kind of hyped up from the sugar already."

Sure enough, it took all of two more seconds for Max to jump and dash away from Nikola faster than even his vampiric reflexes could stop him.

"Oops."

xxxxx

Nikola decided to take Katie upstairs and get her to bed before telling Helen what had happened. It was just better that the distraction not be there while they were hunting for Max. From what he heard the creatures could be difficult to capture.

He got Katharine tucked in to bed and headed out of the toddler's room and down the hall to find Helen in their room, sitting at the desk looking over a few last forms she'd brought to the room with her upon leaving her office for the night. That was not good; if she had that much work waiting she was probably not in a very patient mood.

"Oh, I can see you're still busy I'll just go work on something and come back."

Helen paused and looked up from her files. "Why? What's going on?"

"Nothing." Nikola paused in his tracks by the bedroom door.

"Nikola I bring some work in at least twice a week, it never takes very long and it never keeps you from sticking around and talking nonstop until I give in and give you my intention instead of the work." Helen tried to sound impatient with that prospect, but truth be told she liked that he took the time to make the effort to take her mind away from work at night.

She had a point though and he sighed, turning to face her but his eyes averted to the desk. Helen gave him a knowing glance. "I know that look. Nikola, what did you do?"

"Now before you go blaming me... " He started, but Helen shook her head. "All right Nikola, out with it."

"One of the nubbins escaped."

"What?!" Well, that was all it took. Helen was officially distracted from finishing any of this paperwork tonight. Nubbins loose in the Sanctuary was a very, very bad thing. "When? Why are you just standing here hoping I don't find out? We need to find it immediately."

"I know, I know. " Nikola nodded but Helen paused, looking at him again as she got up from the desk and walked toward where he was standing by the bedroom doorway. "And just how did a nubbin escape, Nikola?" She watched him with that look that could read him like a book and he sighed. "I ... may have... "

"Yes?" She prodded, having little patience for his drawing it out. "Gotten one out of the enclosure.. for Katie to play with."

"Nikola! They're not toys and they're not puppies!"

"I know! That's the problem. You got her all psyched out about puppies at the fair and then she wouldn't stop talking about them, so I figured playing with one of those over-hyped furbies in the small creatures containment lab might distract her for a little while and cheer her up... "

Helen sighed and shook her head. As infuriating, impulsive and irresponsible as Nikola could be, she could hardly hold it against him for trying to make his daughter happy. Her tone softened but she still didn't want to waste any time, or give him the idea that he'd gotten away with this. "Let's go, we need to find it before it causes total chaos. Turn on the level 3 containment protocols. I don't want to wake up Henry for what you did and are perfectly capable of dealing with."

Nikola nodded and started off toward the tech lab to set up the lockdown mode. A message was sent to Henry and Will's emails explaining that there was a lockdown in progress incase either of them happened to wake up and notice the fact.

After this he returned to find Helen checking on Katharine and getting the baby monitor set up on the far-range settings he had adapted it to. "We'll need to be able to hear her if she wakes up, but I want to lock the door to her room so that the nubbin can't get inside. They're not really that trustworthy."

Nikola nodded. He thought it was a bit overly dramatic to lock down the entire Sanctuary - and their daughter - over one escaped mutant bunny, but he didn't say anything. Helen was the abnormals expert, and the mother. And pissing her off any more than she already was was probably not a good idea, he knew that much.

After Katie was securely locked into the room, Helen and Nikola started downstairs to start searching for the escaped creature in the containment area where they had been housed. But it was too late. By the time they reached the nubbins' habitat, the ventilation panel had been chewed through by an overly zealous nubbin. "Bloody hell!" Helen sighed and looked in the enclosure. Many of the nubbins had gone into camo mode but she could make out their rippled outlines near the food dishes, thinking that since humans had shown up in their field of view they were about to be fed. "...I count ten here... "

"Fourteen on the top level, " Nikola nodded.

"That means at least seven have escaped." She sighed ... "And without their temperature-controlled environment.."

"There will be a lot more very soon." Nikola nodded. "Well, let's go."

xxxxx

Helen had initiated further lockdown measures in certain parts of the Sanctuary that they already knew the nubbins had not gotten to. They had been found and quarantined to the lower level their enclosure was in, an area around the kitchen (the Big Guy was not going to be happy that they had cleaned out the pantry again...) and the residential floor, on the western end of the building.

Somewhere in the midst of the drama Henry had woken up and realized right away that the creatures were loose, thanks to his persistant allegry to them and a sneezing fit. He had jumped into action as well, not wanting the creatures loose for a moment longer than necessary. He had gone to the tech lab and found his infamous Nubbin-vac and gone about tracking the creatures down in the residential halls, while Helen and Nikola worked on trapping two who were still loitering around the kitchen.

They put the two nubbins back in the enclosure, and Helen turned to Nikola. "We found these and Henry found three more in the residential halls. "

"I found one trying to chew its way into the elevator system before we came up here," Nikola nodded. "So six..." Helen sighed.

"That leaves one escaped mutant furby." "Nikola, really. This is your doing, what's with the attitude?" Helen shook her head. "There are no more nubbins anywhere around here, heat and movement scans are showing nothing."

"Then we better head back down to the enclosures and see if it's hiding in a corner somewhere..."

Helen nodded and off they went to check the lower level again.

When they entered the basement level that housed the small creatures among others, Helen stepped off the elevator and barely needed to enter the air of this room before knowing the last creature was still down here and very much intent on finding its companions. The powerful pheremones that the nubbins gave off were both familiar and overwhelming. With the others having been racing around here in the recent hours, the trace of them was all the more potent.

"Woah... " Nikola paused, looking around the open space in the habitat area. "It's here, it's definitely here somewhere." "Ah you feel it too then? Wasn't sure how the nubbins' pheremones worked on vampires..." Helen shrugged but Nikola flashed her a playful grin. "Well that and just... you know... you."

"Don't start Nikola we have to find your furry little jailbreaker before he frees the others again and causes an all out disaster."

"Yeah, yeah I know." He shrugged and looked around. Getting out the portable heat scanner he started to aim it around the room searching for any signs of the missing nubbin. He swept it over the room, watching the screen for any nubbin-sized red spots in the heat map.

The mapping wasn't necessary however, because within a few seconds there was a familiar tritter-trill from the middle of the room. Helen and Nikola looked over at the same time and saw Max the nubbin standing in the middle of the room staring at them.

"Let's grab him, " Nikola whispered to Helen. "No, Nikola.. let me get the nubbin-vac.. "

"He'll be gone by then.. Let's go.. " Nikola's eyes were beginning to turn black and Helen knew he was vamping. Well, with his increased speed and reflexes.. maybe this would work. She walked around to approach Max from one direction while Nikola moved opposite her so they could surrounded him.

Unfortunately, it appeared that nubbins had a built-in vampire detector, or at least Max did, because as soon as Nikola vamped, the nubbin got very aggitated and started trying to run away at full speed.

"I've got him!" Helen called as the nubbin ran toward her, but he escaped past her leg and zipped around the lab table. "There!" She pointed and Nikola was after him, but soon he disappeared under the edge. Helen was running around to the other side of the table by that point to try to catch him.

This scramble continued for a moment until Max managed to best both of them, running between them as they both came at him from different sides and they ran right into each other, falling to the floor in a heap.

"Ow!" Nikola sat up, cracking his neck side to side and shrugging his shoulders with a pop as he looked to Helen. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, " Helen nodded, but she was laughing a little bit. Her hair was completely errant now and Nikola's suit jacket looked like it had been put through a typhoon.

When she looked over at him again his eyes were still black, but they were fixed on her with a certain spark of desire. "Nikola..."

"Helen," he half growled, his voice still deep in vampire form. A hand lifting to brush the flyaways of hair back from her face.

"We... we need to catch Max before he... " Helen closed her eyes, feeling his hand brush against her face lightly. His talons were not extended even now and his gentle touch had her stirring. "... Nikola..." She breathed. This was her only final protest and frankly, it wasn't much of a protest. They had been around the escaped nubbins a little too long, she was afraid.

He knew in the back of his mind they should catch Max before he ate into the repaired enclosure and freed the others again, but he couldn't resist her. In vampire form it was even more difficult, the scent of her blood mingled with everything else he found irresistable about her right now and his impulse control was greatly dampened in this form.

He leaned in toward her and kissed her lightly even as they sat there on the floor in the middle of the small animals ward.

"Nikola..." This time Helen's saying his name wasn't a protest but a voiced desire, and as she felt his hands move to her sides she leaned in and let her lips trail over his neck, what she knew would be irresistable to a vampire. As expected, he gave a low growl and drew closer to her. She could feel his muscles shift as he responded to her and she reacted in turn, turning to face him and edging closer in a slight shift of her knee, leaning up enough to press her lips to his.

She felt his hands move up under her shirt and his fingers move over her flesh. He was vamping fully now and she could feel his talons tickle lightly over her skin. "Helen, " he growled in a low tone against her ear, which pushed her to a point of desire she could not resist. Nubbin or no nubbin, she couldn't pull herself away from the vampire for hell nor high water now.

It was three hours later before they even thought to continue the hunt for Max. The small creatures ward would never quite be the same to them again, and they were more than a little grateful for the lockdown keeping the others away. Now, if only they could find their clothes before Will or Henry happened in.


End file.
